One of my great regrets in this life is that I never managed to attain the fleeting title of one of MySpace's "Cool New People." I've had the "person" thing down for some time now, but I guess I didn't really get the "cool" part in time, and now I'm well beyond the deadline for "new."

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I ought to explain this concept of Cool New People to those unfamiliar with the MySpace experience (incidentally, if you're one of those, consider yourself lucky). Among the overload of visually stimulating items vying for your attention on the Myspace home page is a trio of Myspace membersa group of Cool New People that refreshes with every subsequent visit to the page.

This is MySpace, so the prerequisite for being a cool new person generally involves your being a 13-year-old girl from South Dakota who's like, really, really crushing on Davey from AFI, or a 17-year-old dude in San Diego happy to finally have a platform in which to tout your love of the WWE to your 1,345 closest friends.

Visiting the site last Sunday (yep, I'm among the elite group of MySpace users), as part of a fairly regular ritual I like to call "procrastinating from writing," my eyes were, as always, drawn to the site's Cool New People. What made them so cool, and might I some day be able to achieve a comparable level of coolness?

First off, there's Daniel. He's pretty cool. Shaved head, white t-shirt, taking his own photo. No third party photographer for you, Dan. That's way cool. Way cool and way new. To his right, it's Vin. For starters, his name is 'Vin.' Have you ever known anyone named Vin who wasn't cool? No, didn't think so. He looks like he's having fun with his buddies. One of them is wearing a backwards baseball cap. Baseball caps are meant to be worn frontwards. That's super cool, breaking society's preconceived notions of how baseball caps should and shouldn't be worn. Oh, and one guy is flashing the peace sign, but not like just peace, more like P-ace! And, waitis another dude flipping off the camera? Oh, snap! I don't know what the camera person did to get not just one but two middle fingers directed at hir or her personperhaps he or she was simply not cool or new enough. Okay, two down, too cool. Who's that third person. Dennis Kucinichhe's pretty...whaaaa?!

That's not just any Dennis Kucinich. We're talking about Ohio congressman and two-time presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich. Fortunately for Mr. Kucinich, tenacity in the face of astronomical odds is cool, as are yellow ties and big American flags. Also, heartfelt renditions of Ernie Ford's 1955 hit, "Sixteen Tons," is way, way cool. Kucinich's inclusion as a MySpace Cool New Person is remarkable not only because of the company he's in, but also because it's almost certainly the most glowing endorsement ever given to a liberal candidate on a NewsCorp-owned media outlet.

A few refreshes later, it becomes clear: Kucinich isn't the only Cool New Person vying for a shot at the Oval Office this year. They're all there; Obama, Rudy, Hillary, Mitteven Ron Paul, who's already won the special election for a place in our collective Appscout heartif only we could secure a way into his top eight, we'd be golden (if you make it into a candidate's top eight, you're pretty much guaranteed a cabinet position, right?). All things considered, after the smoke clears on the campaign financing and partisan bickering, 2008 will surely go down in history as the race for the title of Cool New President.

Brian Heater has worked at a number of tech pubs, including Engadget, Laptop, and PCMag (where he served as Senior Editor). Most recently, he was as the Managing Editor of TechTimes.com. His writing has appeared in Spin, Wired, Playboy, Entertainment Weekly, The Onion, Boing Boing, Publishers Weekly, The Daily Beast and various other publications. He hosts the weekly Boing Boing interview podcast RiYL, has appeared as a regular NPR contributor and shares his Queens apartment with a rabbit named Lucy.
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